The day of rigorous training left Zemin weary to the bone. It was not as bad as when he pushed himself to the limit in the academy, but after the dinner and the evening prayer he just wanted to finish unpacking his things and read a book before sleep.
Instead, he had to leave his room and go outside. He passed Jagger watching TV, while Citri and Narcisa played a card game nearby—the same one Zemin witnessed them playing before. It didn't seem like a typical game—all the cards had pictures of fantasy creatures on them.
Zemin wanted to ask them about it.
'Another time,' he thought and sighed, about to walk past the duo.
"Oh, Zemin!" Citri waved at him. "Want to play with us? I think if we team up against Narcisa, we actually have a chance of beating her!"
"Uh… I don't even know the rules. Or this game."
"Don't worry, we will explain it all! It's based on a pre-Cataclysm game, and you must build a deck with creatures to fight—"
"Sorry, Citri, but I really can't play now," Zemin said. "Another time?"
"Are you hurrying somewhere, Zemin?" Jagger asked, turning away from the TV show. "If you want to go to the city, then forget it. It takes 2 hours to drive in one direction—you won't get back in time for a curfew, even if you had a personal car. And being outside of the base after curfew is forbidden, if you forgot."
Zemin shifted on his feet awkwardly. "I… just want to take a walk."
Narcisa snorted. "The worst lie in the entire history of humankind. Asking the poor puppy more after this would be animal cruelty. Forget it! I bet he just wants to get his dick wet with some cute Servant girl." She placed a card from her hand opposite of Citri's and added, "That's just how teenagers work."
Zemin's cheeks reddened, but Jagger nodded sagely.
"Right, right. I was the same a decade younger… Go on, then, Zemin! Just make sure you have some rubbers to spare. I can share mine if you need them."
It took a moment and a deep breath for Zemin to regain some of his composure.
"No, sir! Thank you, sir!"
He dashed out of the door to the giggles of Citri behind him and heat threatening to spread to his ears.
What's the worst of all, trying to pick up a cute girl sounded like a great way to spend the evening. It was probably where Danis went. Zemin had spotted several pretty women in the camp, not counting Citri and Narcisa, but he was too focused on other things back then to think twice about them.
Now he did. But… Citri was still the most beautiful of the women in the camp, and Narcisa could've been in second place if not for her scar.
Maybe they weren't in an exclusive relationship with anyone, either…
Zemin kept fantasizing even as he walked out of the base's gates and to a rocky hillside nearby. There he found a place with the least amount of grass and probed the ground with his foot. It felt solid enough.
'Void System, give me direct connection with you.'
For a moment, Zemin's thoughts and sight were overwhelmed by white noise. When it abated, he felt like he grew an extra limb. It was invisible, but he felt its presence and could control it like his own.
That "limb" was an ability to open Void Portals. Although at first, the Void System opened them for Zemin, it was more convenient in a fight for him to do it himself.
If Zemin was in the "direct control" mode for too long, though, his head began to hurt.
Next, Zemin let out a thin thread of Psi-energy downward, feeling through the soil. Like he hoped, there were many large rock formations underneath him.
Zemin reached out with his invisible "limb" and poke a spherical hole through the veil between dimensions, half a meter in diameter. It was as simple as tightening his fingers in a fist.
Underneath him, Zemin's Psi-feelers felt several clumps of earth fall into the Void Portal and disappear, but the rest of the surrounding rock was stable.
'8 units? That's not bad… The rock here must be granite—it's very dense and energy-rich,' Zemin thought, retracting his feelings and going past this spot. 'I still need to be careful, or this entire hill might fall on itself. Void System, watch out for places where a Void Portal might collapse the entire thing.'
'Will do, Master.'
Zemin placed another small Void Portal a few meters away from the first one, and then another one. He repeated this until his energy reserve reached 30 units.
Void System consumed a unit per month to sustain itself, but Zemin spent much more than that. When he had to destroy rocks instead of using Void Portals on demons, Zemin wanted to punch something.
As if reading his mood, the Void System spoke,
Zemin shook his head. 'No, and don't ask me again! You already showed me what happened with your previous dimension. Do you honestly expect me to do the same with this one?'
When Zemin returned to his barracks, the living room was—thankfully—empty. Only the bathroom mirror saw Zemin's gloomy face.
Only Zemin and the Void System knew that before the Void System was created, its home dimension wasn't so profoundly empty—it was a world like Zemin's.
And then, bit by bit, it wasn't.